milkshake duck

yeah I recognize her from super meat boy, yeah it just blew up on horny twitter spontaneously for no reason. anyway...

the game is short and fun. there's a hard mode, it's even better with some interesting obstacles that force you to cheat the game in creative ways, and you beat it, and a very interesting moment plays out in the last minute of the ending. it's kinky and it sort of pulls you into the narrative. It worked on me to say the least but... then I read this. If you look up more of this stuff it's clear that Jill is based on the developer's partner and subject of abuse. It's stomach churning to think about how this could happen and be kept under the rug, compared to how good the game is otherwise, kinda wish I knew about this first. if I gave this a score it would be like 3.75ish, but this game is probably best left in the past. BDSM stuff seems to have a very thin line between being healthy and toxic.

PMD DX might be one of the best remakes of a game I've ever played. Even though I've never experienced the original, from what I can tell DX absolutely realizes the gba titles to its truest potential. Every aspect of this game has a ton of love and care put into it and to my knowledge the only thing that ended up being cut was the Friend Zones you could walk around in, which is understandable at the very least. The rest is near flawlessly recreated, particularly the artstyle and music which both manage to capture the feeling of the older pmd games and yet be elevated to what their native home consoles couldn't preform.

DX seriously may be one of the best looking games on the switch. Even the basic dungeons are so pleasing to look at, the watercolor art really lends itself well to the kind and emotional spirit of pmd. I frequently had to stop just to gawk at the environments. It's so obvious that a lot of love went into this entry, and this isn't even mentioning the music, which I think was brilliantly remastered. Mixing the original gba soundfont with a new orchestrated version of the soundtrack was a really smart move; the music alone is enough to make me cry and it really elevates the more emotional scenes. On my second playthrough, I also noticed how well the cutscenes were animated which felt weird for a pokemon game. Rayquaza, the star falling, and all the other legendary intros just looked so gorgeous. DX is made of many good things, and I can tell that it's very much a loveletter to the series as a whole.
The gameplay itself though, I think this game is probably as good as its gonna get. Naturally, it can get pretty repetitive and it's not really something you can play nonstop, but that's alright. For some reason I had a huge issue with Sky Tower though; I was severely underleveled and kept getting wiped out. I'm not sure how this even happened but I've learned that pmd really, really, really sucks when you have to grind. It is so frustrating and I honestly contemplated knocking the game down a star because of it, but in the end I couldn't really bring myself to since the rest of the game went off without any interruptions. Just... make sure you're at least level 35 before the final dungeon or flygon will knock your teeth in.
DX is definitely one of the higher quality pokemon games that have come out recently along with the new Pokémon Snap, so I would recommend this to anyone who feels like they've lost their love for the series, since this game is what rekindled my own feelings for it back in 2020 when it released. As good as this game is, I can only hope that we'll live to see a remake of Explorers in this style... one can dream ):

Can't really complain much about this one. Was a cute and fun time. The graphics are 100% the standout here from its beautiful art design to the striking color palette that gives a unique cutesy macabre twist to the afterlife. The story accompanies the setpiece well, with touching and thoughtful characters. Just wish that the antagonist was a little more well developed.

Game mechanics were awesome for an RPG2K3 game. Not every day I get to see a timing based attack. Unfortunately I found the battles to be quite buggy at times with me even shouting at my screen wondering why hitting the down arrow didn't let me dodge. Other times I had to hit the dodge button as I was navigating the menu. Obviously this isn't quite the best engine to implement those kinds of mechanics but I don't blame em. I do just kinda wish it was just vanilla ATB if it meant it was a smoother experience.

Can't complain though. Great game, great experience. Only really took me 2 hours to beat and it's free so I'd say this is worth your time!

Man, I’m pretty sure the definition of ‘my shit’ changes every time I wanna say something’s my shit, but god is Sanitarium my shit. Namely, by being the spiritual successor to Harvester that I never knew was out there. Transgressive, fucking gnarly, yet at the same time so evocative. A mystery you’re trying to solve regarding who you are and why you’re here, interspersed with segments where you animorph into a little girl or a four-armed freak and walk around a Doctor Who episode. Oodles of characters, with oodles of dialogue (oodles of voiced dialogue, too, which is pretty incredible for a game from 1998), who all yet feel distinct from one another and cover a different piece of the greater picture. The idea, the immediate indication that everything around represents something else entirely, prompting the player to speculate at every little thing: to put the puzzle pieces together in their head as more and more keep getting added to the board. Wrap it up as a 90s adventure game, add all the ambitious storytelling shit without any of the typical design issues being a 90s adventure game entails, and… you get the picture. One painted in viscera, in grime, in some unfortunate 90s stuff, but that’s frankly just part of the package. And, to an extent, part of the appeal.

I think what I love most about this game is… not just its artstyle, but how that kinda feeds into how the game is played. Unlike most adventure games of its ilk, Sanitarium is isometric. As opposed to seeing things from side-on, you see them top down. And as opposed to seeing merely one room at a time, each chapter gives you the whole map as one big ‘room,’ encouraging you to explore, interact, find items, and solve puzzles, in part to unlock more areas of the map, in the goal of eventually finding your way out of the puzzle box and into the next one. They’re generally self-contained, and to an extent, episodic — while each odd-numbered chapter follows your journey through the titular sanitarium, even-numbered chapters send you somewhere else entirely: almost alien worlds, following their own storylines, yet still thematically connecting to the main plot, both thematically and through the memories you periodically get back. I’m especially fond of how this helps the game avoid… the typical adventure game pitfalls. As everything is in its own little box, and as things don’t transfer between chapters, there’s very little risk of softlocking, nor does your inventory ever become so big that it becomes unusable. With the exception of one chapter, I never had to pixel hunt for anything: items are fairly well highlighted against the environment, and the mouse cursor will happily highlight all the things you can interact with. You never have to backtrack, or go through room after room after room after room: there are generally only a few points of interest all interconnected with each other, and even then, as opposed to the typical inventory puzzles, most of what you have to do in Sanitarium is… talking to people. Talking to other people about what the first person just said. Listening to them so that you know what to do next. Interfacing with the story…

Which, in turn, means interfacing with the best of what this game has to offer. I know I’m kinda repeating myself here but I’m really into this game’s narrative. Not only the main story — the way it dripfeeds more and more until you slowly clue into the full picture — but… honestly I think the side-chapters were my favourite part of this, if, partially, because I never knew what I was gonna get going into them. They vary, not just in aesthetic — the grey, dreary, run-down circus besieged by an outside threat compared to… the sheer grossness of The Hive — but in the kind of stories they want to tell. Compare chapter 2’s slow-burn Children of the Corn-themed mystery, where you explore an abandoned town, play games with the denizens, slowly piecing stuff together, to chapter 8’s… incredible bungling of Aztec mythology, one where you go to the Water Temple and the Wind Temple and the Jaguar Temple to defeat the random guy god Quetzalcoatl, a name the game is incapable of pronouncing correctly or even consistently. More than just being really fun on their own, though, I really like how they link into the main plot: beyond being the vector in how the main character gets their memories back, they serve really well as explorations of the main character’s subconscious: everything being representative of something and the game all but inviting the player to try and get their head around it, trying to understand what means what, shoving some utter gobbledygook in your face and yet still having it make sense by the end. It’s great. Such a ride.

I also have to say, if you really have to put combat into your 90s adventure game, there are worse ways to do it than what Sanitarium does. While it still leaves a bit to be desired — the combat sections feel rather extraneous to the story themselves, and I preferred going through the random obstacle challenges the game also does — it’s unintrusive on the rest of the game, and not much of a chore to go through. Specifically, the designation of combat to specific “combat zones” within an area, and the fact that combat itself is rather low stakes (with the player… only being sent back to the beginning of the combat zone upon death) means that… while it feels rather pointless when the game stops in its track to go make you do combat for five minutes, it’s rather inoffensive, not a mark against the game like combat was for, say, Harvester. Where I think this game perhaps does falter is in how much dialogue there is. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. Whereas sometimes it’s to the game's strengths — all its characters, and how well they fill in whatever world they happen to be inhabiting — oftentimes the dialogue you get is… the same explanation/exposition somebody else has given you, and that somebody else is gonna give you when you talk to them. I get why that’s the case (you need to account as to whether a given person is gonna talk to that given NPC first, or is only gonna try to talk to that NPC) but what this results in are lotttttttttttsa cases where the game is endlessly repeating itself but where you still feel obligated to keep checking because maybe this time you’ll get some new info, or find some fun dialogue, or something worth it. Kinda found my eyes glazing over after the third person in a row talking to me about the exact same thing. It’s rougghhhhhhhhhh.

And it’s a bit sad that that is a bit of a knock against it because otherwise this… really is a game that’s firing on all cylinders, and otherwise does everything in its power to appeal to me and me specifically. For being a 90s adventure game that avoids… basically all the pitfalls its genre otherwise tends to fall into, an utterly evocative set design that never fails to feel so effectively grotty no matter which disparate place you happen to go, and a story that’s more than happy to keep providing more and more as you piece together both the literal and figurative parts of its narrative… man I hope there’s more like this out there. It might not be the only thing that appeals to me, but god did this really hit the spot. 9/10.

I feel like, intellectually, I only have nice things to say about Not-Bloodborne Kart. Its got incredible presentation, with a mix of well-planned and well-choreographed cinematics as well as a faithful but lively PS1 user experience. The inclusion of guns and combat in a kart racer feels pretty solid, managing to avoid feeling unintuitive or janky in like 99.9% of situations you can find yourself in. The kart racing itself is mostly competent, I find it difficult to complain about the game itself - and certainly I find this to be a better platform for Liliths creativity than Bloodborne Demake was.

But man…. something about it makes me feel slightly hollow. I guess the best way I could phrase this is: its still not a very exciting use of Bloodborne. Yeah, its Not-Bloodborne now and yeah, its mostly a comedy game, but theres also attempts at staging tension and bravado with Nightmare Karts facsimile of Bloodbornes narrative and..... idk. It just leaves you wondering why some parts were so important and worth being tributized and other parts werent so much. No Yahar’gul? No forest race track? Shadows of Yharnam but no Rom? No Amygdalas? You got Astral Clocktower and Maria but no mfing Fishing Hamlet?? Theres just weird representation choices here - but thankfully the humor takes the opportunity to incorporate quite a few. Church Giants squeezing into a kart or the fact that the Bloated Pig is a vehicle are excellent decisions.

In fact despite some of my reservation I actually have to give it a full star exclusively for the fact that, in addition to Nicolas J Micolash’s kart being just him running like a lunatic on foot, his death scream is also like a 15 second long reverb-laiden howl that can be heard no matter where you are on the track. It just absolutely floors me every single time I hear it like "ooooooooooooyyYYYAAAAARGHAHHHHHHHH"

I had a rough start with Hypnospace Outlaw. The opening hour led me to believe it was first and foremost anti-capitalist satire, and when the game resisted my actions made under this assumption, I was frustrated. The premise alone, sleep being commodified in the name of productivity, sounds dystopian. The tutorial introduces your role as an online moderator, which you perform by reporting violations such as copyright infringement and harassment. You’re told that, although you can submit a report once you meet the report quota, you can earn a cash prize for each violation reported beyond this quota. This immediately brought to mind a similar mechanic in Papers, Please, which incentivizes you to detain people whenever possible for a commission. Sure, in Hypnospace you’re only paid in hypnocoins which explicitly have no real-world value, and sure, there’s no backstory about how I have to feed and house my starving family, but come on! I went in expecting to have my morals pushed and was ready to wield (and abuse) my authority.

That’s not what Hypnospace Outlaw is.

While struggling to deal with the game’s second case, centering around harassment in the teen forum, I was forced to realize what Hypnospace Outlaw was actually trying to do. I’d found a lead about a site called “The Dumpster,” a mean-spirited blog making fun of lolcows. None of what was on that blog was outright harassment – reading between the lines it’s obviously meant to be demeaning and cruel, but the language is mild and inoffensive enough so that it’s following the letter but not the spirit of the law. That didn’t deter me, and I tried to report every single line of text on the site for harassment. But none of them actually stuck – I got told over and over again to stop sending false reports. “But how am I supposed to abuse my authority if the standards for what constitutes a violation are so high?” I thought. “It’s like I really am supposed to act like a regular moderator.”

After that point it stuck. I had been trying to shove square pegs into round holes, but once I realized my place in Hypnospace, I embraced it. I stopped looking at everything as a potential violation and started to lose myself in the different communities and subcultures found on the forums.

Hypnospace Outlaw is pure fun. It’s unrelentingly earnest and empathetic to the people inhabiting its fictional world, and my role as moderator is just a framing device to put me, the player, as a tourist into this world. It perfectly balances an absurd, almost cartoonist tone while still feeling entirely grounded. People are weird! When given complete freedom to express yourself in a judgement-free (or at least judgement-lite) zone, we’re all cringe and embarrassing!

In recent years I’ve been making an effort let myself enjoy things without shame. I’m only 20, so I wasn’t even alive when this game would have taken place, but it resonated with my journey with unrestricted internet access and how I portray myself online. I remember making a Tumblr account at 13 and over-decorating it to make it feel like my own space before feeling so ashamed at how “cringey” it all was that I deleted it before ever posting anything. Even today, I’m always terrified to post my own thoughts and opinions (like this review!) because putting it out into the world and having it be perceived, people forming ideas about me separate from how I view myself, is terrifying. Anything I put out into the world becomes a reflection of myself, and sincerity is terrifying! It’s so much easier to hide behind a veil of irony!

The people of Hypnospace, on the other hand, are so unabashedly themselves. Each and every person’s page is a sensory nightmare of conflicting colours, textures, sounds, and imagery. But it feels so personal and so earnest that I can’t help but smile anyway. That’s admirable, and something I want to work on myself.

It’s kind of funny then, how I went in expecting this to be mean-spirited and cynical, only for it to instead be a love letter to the internet and those that put a piece of themselves online. I don’t think I could have had this same conclusion if not for my faulty first impression of Hypnospace Outlaw.

I’m a big proponent of the idea that “limitations breed creativity.” That’s part of the reason I love indie games so much! Gorgeous photorealistic graphics and hundreds of hours of gameplay are all well and good, but with a low budget comes a willingness to experiment, to be rough around the edges in a way that connects with its target audience with a specificity that something with a bigger budget could never manage. That ambition is what I see most in I Was a Teenage Exocolonist.

IWATE is, first and foremost, a coming-of-age story. Mechanically and thematically I’d liken this game to Citizen Sleeper, but unlike that game which takes place over a couple months, IWATE is set over the course of 10 years. Your protagonist, Sol, is only 10 years old when their spaceship, the Stratos, arrives on the alien planet Vertumna. In this new and dangerous world, Sol navigates their teen years alongside the foundation of their colony.

The breadth of IWATE’s themes is astounding. The inter- and intrapersonal journeys had while growing up juxtapose the material conditions of the colony and their settlement in new territory, with environmentalism and colonization being the primary ethical issues explored. As a teenager, when can we trust authority? As a civilian, when can we trust those in charge? What do we do when those stupid, no-good, bossy adults are the ones waging war? What about when community leaders neglect the needs of the next generation they’re meant to foster? Being a teenager is hard, but try going through puberty and adolescence in the uncharted alien wilderness. Through these topics and more, IWATE masterfully weaves together sci-fi and coming-of-age into something greater than the sum of its parts.

\\ (The following section has minor spoilers.)

During your first playthrough, you eventually learn that Sol is in a time loop. This is, in part, a diegetic justification for New Game+; it’s not like, say, Undertale, where the true story can only be unearthed through repeat playthroughs. If you’re satisfied, you can put down IWATE after your first playthrough. But you’d be missing out on a lot.

For Sol, this time loop is a blessing, not a curse. IWATE holds a great love and empathy for humanity and our potential. You can’t do everything in a single playthrough. There’s no “Golden” end, where you max out every stat, befriend everyone, and lead everyone to a perfect tomorrow. Instead, you’re encouraged to construct the lives Sol could lead, the different people they could grow up to be. Each life is equally as valid as the next. What role will you play for your community?

\\ (Spoilers end here.)

Of course, it’s only natural that IWATE falls into some pitfalls with its limitations. The more choices there are for a player to make, the more choices there are that need to be accounted for. I wish there were more ways for characters to die, I wish there were more unique endings instead of career endings, I wish romance didn’t fade into the background after you’ve gotten into a relationship. I wish the team had more resources to really flesh out everything I’ve mentioned and more. But if they had had those resources from the start, would I Was a Teenage Exocolonist exist? Limitation breeds creativity, after all.

I’ve played through IWATE twice, and I plan to play it many more times in the future. It’s ambitious and its breadth of scope is breathtaking. I haven’t discovered everything and I don’t think I ever will, but it’s that sense of infinite possibility that compels me to see what else I Was a Teenage Exocolonist has to offer.

“The child you were will not return.”

(This is a rewrite of my first ever review on Backloggd! For posterity’s sake I’ll leave up that review here, but I don’t love it and I’m writing this review as an improvement on what I wanted to say back then.)

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Before I played In Stars and Time in November of 2023, I played the proof-of-concept version, START AGAIN: a prologue a whole year and a half earlier, in April of 2022. I usually don’t play demos, especially not paid demos, but I’d been following this project based on the art style and I felt like it was something special. I liked the prologue well enough. It was charming and I was drawn to the characters. The prologue starts in medias res as the party prepare to defeat the “final boss”, the King, at the end of their JRPG journey. The catch is that the protagonist, Siffrin, is stuck in a time loop and nobody else in the party is aware. Despite this, Siffrin resolves to carry this burden alone, and to use this ability to defeat the King without worrying his allies.

My one big issue with this demo was that, although I liked him as a character, Siffrin’s decision to bottle up his feelings and keep the time loop a secret made no sense to me. It seemed contrived that he wouldn’t, even once, experiment with the time loop and tell his allies about what was going on. If it caused any issues, it wouldn’t matter – he could just loop back and START AGAIN. After the demo, I was a little disappointed but still hopeful the full release could turn my opinion around.



As the full release approached, I grew really excited. I’d been following the dev’s monthly dev logs on Steam up to release, and I bought the full game in the first week after it came out, a rare event for me. I finished it in 6 days, binging it between study sessions for my upcoming exams. I was hooked, and by the end of the game, In Stars and Time had fully recontextualized the demo.

Siffrin didn’t tell his party about the time loop because he loves them. He didn’t tell them because he refuses to be vulnerable.

When I played the demo I saw these characters from my omniscient point of view as the player, as little pawns to command in whatever way would progress the plot. Siffrin’s refusal to open up felt like an arbitrary obstacle put in place by the creator as if to say “but then we wouldn’t have a plot, would we?” But Siffrin isn’t the player, and he isn’t aware he exists in a video game. To him, the rest of the party aren’t pawns; they’re his allies. His friends. His family.

What’s more, Siffrin is incredibly repressed. He’s reserved, happy to nod along in the background because he believes that placing himself as the centre of attention will lead everyone to hate him as much as he hates himself. He sees himself as inherently less valuable than others, and takes the time loop to be his chance to martyr himself in service of his family.

I’m reminded of Jacob Geller’s video Time Loop Nihlism, wherein he talks about Deathloop and the way replaying a game desensitizes us. The more we play, the more we’re able to abstract NPCs from living, breathing people into gameplay systems. Our immersion fades with each repeat as cause and effect become predictable. This was the mindset I had playing the demo.

In Stars and Time actively subverts this idea. Siffrin refuses to allow nihilism to overtake him. Sure, if anything happened to a family member, he could reset the timeline and fix it. But in that moment, in that present moment, his family would suffer, and that suffering would be real. For the same reason we wouldn’t kill a person even though they’ll die sometime in the future anyways, Siffrin won’t let his family come to harm even though he can reset the harm they suffer. The time loop is his burden and his alone, and he will do everything in his power to allow his family to be happy for as long as he can.

In Stars and Time is repetitive. You will repeat the same dungeon over and over for the game’s entire runtime. You will fight the same enemies over and over. The same bosses. Siffrin’s family will repeat the same dialogue again and again. You will find the same items scattered throughout the dungeon. You will walk between the same rooms in the same layout looking for the same keys to progress. There are plenty of quality-of-life features to reduce frustration; you can loop to specific areas in the dungeon after dying, you can skip seen dialogue, and Siffrin retains levels between every loop while his family retain their levels at checkpoints within the dungeon. But, no matter what, you will repeat the same events over and over. You will be sent back and forth, and at several points you will progress to a certain point in the dungeon only to realize you had to do something in a now blocked-off area, forcing another reset. The ludonarrative is excellent and encourages the player to experience Siffrin’s frustrations alongside him.

This is why Siffrin’s character arc is so compelling. The whole game, he does his best to protect, long past the point the player has. Every so often he’ll make a major breakthrough, and his enthusiasm is extreme. This is it! He’s figured it out! That enthusiasm soon fades as his plans inevitably lead to more and more dead ends. Even Siffrin has his breaking point, and his growing disillusionment with the repetition, the monotony, makes him a fascinating tragic protagonist. I won’t say much because of spoilers, but the toll the time loop takes on his mental health, compounded with his poor self-esteem and inability to show vulnerability, make Siffrin an amazing and relatable protagonist.

I could praise everything about this game if I wanted to, but I chose to focus on Siffrin because his characterization is central to what makes In Stars and Time so engaging. I love its characters, its world-building, its music, its everything. Please, if what I’ve written above is at all interesting and you can stomach the repetition, you owe it to yourself to play In Stars and Time.

The first time I played Katamari Damacy was with Reroll in 2018. I had gotten a copy for Christmas after thinking it seemed interesting. I played it a bit throughout my week trip with my ex-girlfriend and thought it was somewhat fun and nothing else. Fast forward to 2022, I was going through my games deciding what to play next. I see Reroll and remembered I didn't actually beat it. Since I knew it was short, I decided to finish it this time. Coming out of it, I thought it was great and a lot better than I initially thought. Fast forward again to the end of 2022, I get the PS2 version. I already really enjoyed Reroll but this replay of the OG version made me truly love Katamari and got me to eventually play We Love Katamari. And yet again, with this most recent playthrough, I still love this game.

The story of Damacy is wacky and lighthearted. The King of Cosmos (this giant flying handsome guy like fella) flies into all the stars in the sky as well as the moon because he was drunk. You the prince, must now roll up objects in levels and create new stars (and the moon) to fix your dad's mistake. That's the entire story but it works because of this games weird and quirky humor.

So you have to roll up objects in levels and make them big enough to satisfy the king before he turns them into stars. Sounds simple enough right? Well besides there being some levels that aren't just that, the way you collect objects in this game is interesting. You start with a ball at a specific size and must gradually make it bigger over time. The thing with that is, you can't roll just anything at the start. You have a size limit depending on how large your ball is and as it gets bigger, so does the size of possible things you can roll up. It can be a bit tricky to gauge what things you can and can't collect at your ball size, and if you run into something you can't it can knock things out of your ball. It's actually not too hard to do that, because along with knocking into large objects, if you get stuck somehow that can make you drop objects as well. It's actually not hard to get stuck in this game, and while it can be somewhat frustrating, you can usually escape. A large part of the reason this game is so fun to play, besides the general gameplay being solid, is how wacky collecting everything is. What you can collect ranges from small stuff like erasers or thumbtacks to literal whole landmasses and clouds in the sky. Besides the King occasionally cracking jokes or reprimanding you in levels, a lot of the character comes the humans. Like halfway into the game, you start getting to levels where you can collect humans. There are all types of them and they all have hilarious or even somewhat-terrifying reactions to being rolled up. But this is the fun of the game, going from level to level and seeing what types of craziness will ensue.

Something I think I prefer in We Love are the level settings. In this game it's a lot more basic and is someone's home, a little town, an area by a lake and then a whole city. It's not bad in the slightest, and I do really like how the levels evolve over the time..I just prefer We Love's more varied level themes now. I will say though, while I do at the very least like every level, the final one where you must make the moon is so peak. It's a city level but you're given 25 minutes to complete it and you eventually get big enough to collect full cities and clouds in the sky and a literal thunder god. It's insane and by far the wackiest level in the game and I love it. I gave a couple very minor things I wish were better in this game but the thing I actually don't like are some of the side levels. Besides the usual ones I described, there are levels where you must create constellations. These range from levels where you have to collect as many of an object as you can to one where you must collect as many paired objects as you can. These are all fine and dandy but then there are some where you have to collect the biggest of an object you can. These two levels are make Ursa Major and Make Taurus. With these, you have to collect the biggest bear and cow in each respective level. Only issue is there are bears and cows all over the level and if you collect just one it ends the level. They want you to memorize the stage so you can make your ball big enough and find the bear/cow. Idk, I never had the patience for these and just don't find them fun so I always just collect the first one I see and skip it basically. Another level I'm not as keen on but still try with is the one where you must make a 10M ball but you can't see your progress so you must guess. I do find it a little fun to see how close I can get but it's pretty difficult for me to gauge where I'm at just by guessing. That's my biggest issue with the game, these three side levels and they're only like a 10th of the game so it's not the biggest deal in the world.

The games visuals and artstyle is fantastic. It goes for cel-shading I believe and it makes every level so vibrant and colorful. The levels are already cool enough as it is but the little planets you go on in the hub, atmospherically are great as well. It's literally just your means of going to each level or the options in the game but it has a ton of personality that just makes it super memorable. The entire game is like that tbh, even the title screen with the three game files has you rolling up parts of the word Namco to start..each file in the game is literally a couple letters of the publisher! It's just incredibly quirky and charming which I love a lot.

Besides the game's weird and quirky nature, the soundtrack is kind of what sells this game. It's honestly a very impressive and out there OST, with songs from all different music genres. You have swing, techno, salsa, J-pop etc. This game is bound to have a song you'll like. Some of my favorites are Que Sera Sera, Katamari on the Rocks, Lovely Angel and plenty more. There are actually a couple of stage songs I'm not like a huge fan on, namely Wanda Wanda and You Am Smart. They aren't bad, they just pale in comparison to a lot of the other songs I feel. I honestly don't think I like love love any song in this game, but like the collective majority of great and experimental songs just makes me appreciate the soundtrack a ton. That is...besides Lonely Rolling Star which is not only my favorite song between both Katamari games I've played, it's one of my favorite videogame songs ever now and is probably in my top 5 VGM of all time. The levels it's in could be total shit and I wouldn't care because the song is so good, so every level it was in (only 2 apparently which is kinda sadge) was pure bliss. The final level was also pure bliss because on top of being the most fun, it played Katamari on the Rocks which is a banger. Either way, great OST which is even more peak because it has Lonely Rolling Star.

Had a couple of little gripes that might be fixed by We Love when I replay it. Doesn't change the fact this game is peak though. Was thinking about bumping this to a 10, still might in the future, but for now I'll just keep it at a 9. Still a blast to play and just artistically it's amazing (both conceptually and it's music/art style) which I appreciate a TON. Anyways, next review will be Majora's Mask and then I'll probably join everyone in playing Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance so look forward to those reviews in the future!

A Short Hike simultaneously is and isn’t exactly what it sounds like. It’s a comfy and cozy exploration game where you play as a teenage bird girl named Claire. Claire is staying with her Aunt May for the summer at Hawk Peak Provincial Park, where her Aunt works as a ranger. The park is located on an island that has to be accessed by a ferry. It’s your typical beautiful looking park which surrounds a tall mountain, the kind of thing that can be hard for kids acclimated to suburban life to appreciate.

Claire lounges around her Aunt’s house, waiting for a very important phone call. Her Aunt tells her that the Park doesn’t get cellphone reception, and that she’ll have to hike up the trail to Hawk’s Peak if she wants to get a signal. Claire’s never made the journey up to Hawk’s Peak before, but this phone call is extremely important to Claire, and so she decides to make the journey so that she’ll be able to pick up when she gets the call.

A Short Hike is a game you’re just meant to chill and vibe with. While your goal is to get to the top of Hawk’s Peak, there’s no real sense of urgency. You can take all the time you need to get there. Exploring the Park and the rest of the island is the game’s primary focus. You can talk to the various residents throughout the park, get to know them as well as life on the island, play some beachstickball with the kids, fish with an old guy, and collect things like shells and coins. The island is very well designed with plenty of stuff to do and lots of things to find. In some ways it kind of reminds me of a level from Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine, just without any form of hazards.

Claire controls in a similar fashion to 3D platforming games. She has the ability to climb certain walls, jump and flap her wings as a method of mid-air jumping, as well as glide through the air while following the wind to carry her farther distances. In order to make it to the top of Hawk’s Peak, Claire needs to find Golden Feathers which increase her stamina, allowing her to climb taller walls as well as flap her wings in mid-air additional times. This is the most important collectable to find, as you’ll need seven of them in order to make it to the summit. There’s an abundance of Golden Feathers on the island though, so acquiring seven isn’t too difficult or too linear of a process. Claire feels very comfortable to control, and the flapping and glide mechanics feel very satisfying. Much like its title implies, the game as a whole is pretty short. It can be beaten in a little over an hour unless you’re trying to 100% the game, and even then, most people only take about four hours to complete it. I didn’t do all of the optional content, but I did some of it and I enjoyed what I played.

For the most part, its presentation is great. The game has an atmosphere that’s like a cross between Animal Crossing and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, making for a vibe that’s all around the highest levels of cozy possible. Loved the adaptive soundtrack. I thought the default settings for the pixelation was wayyyy too high. The game genuinely looked like a poorly emulated DS game until I turned the settings for that down. Once I did, I thought the game looked great.

A Short Hike is a game that achieves what it sets out to do. It isn’t anything groundbreaking, it isn’t something you’re going to spend a lot of time with, but I think that unless you’re super jaded, it’s a game that you can at the very least vibe with and play with a smile on your face. For a lotta people, that’s more than enough. Claire’s satisfying controls, the open-ended approach towards beating the game, and the game’s impeccable aesthetic all make for a very worthwhile experience. It’s not the type of game I’m head over heels for, but at the same time, it’s a game that I really appreciate.

What is it that I look for in a video game? What is it that I look for in any form of media? The determining factors that can make or break the entire experience for me? When I interact with a medium like this, be it game, movie, or otherwise, I'm looking for a world. A world that I can look into and appreciate, examine, feel every aspect. A world that knows how to pull you in, using every tool it has available. VA-11 Hall-A, and its cyberpunk dystopia they call Glitch City, is precisely what I'm looking for.

This is not a world you are meant to appreciate, though. This is, as stated earlier, a dystopia, run down by the corporations and awful governing bodies that tower over it and its citizens, criminalistic and morally bankrupt at every turn, where dreams struggle to make it out alive or die trying. Yet, despite it all, there's a place of respite. A bar tucked away from the public eye, and a glance into a story that doesn't belong to you, but to a cold, tired woman on the verge of losing it all, whether she knows the full extent of it or not.

Amidst the cyberpunk bartender action, you will meet new faces, a large majority of which are already well acquainted with the game's protagonist, Jill Stingray. Immediately, you'll notice that, in a sense, there is no beginning to this story. There's no need to formally introduce everyone, as this is just another day on the job for Jill, mixing drinks and changing lives as she does for the regulars of Valhalla. Through these customers, you'll soon recognize the depravity of Glitch City. Customers of all shapes and sizes, all different motives and purposes will stumble into the bar each and every day, yet life proceeds as normal for the citizens of the city, and through listening to their story and talking to them, over time, you get used to them. Everyone you talk to has a story, no matter how minor, and those stories can change everything you know and believe. Valhalla gives these characters a place to be vulnerable and speak their mind, giving the player a glance into even more stories, the awful pasts that bring one to where they are now.

But a story isn’t what makes a world. Not alone, at least. A world isn’t complete without its environment and atmosphere, and VA-11 Hall-A nails this aspect stunningly. Michael “Garoad” Kelly’s work on this game’s soundtrack is a damn masterpiece for every scenario, complemented by the jukebox system that integrates the music into the world of the bar seamlessly. To speak a little more personally, this is easily my favorite soundtrack to come out of any video game. Just launching the game and listening to its title screen is enough to get me emotional, knowing full well what’s to come. Making it past that, things only get better with tracks like Safe Haven playing outside of the bar, and the wide list of songs to select during your work, with such beautiful standouts like Synthestitch, Snowfall, and the classic Every Day Is Night, not to mention the way it all meshes perfectly with the PC-98 aesthetic of VA-11 Hall-A’s entire interface. Everything just feels so natural, as it should. The songs that play each day are handpicked by you, the player, at the start of every shift, making it that much easier to immerse yourself in this short glimpse into Jill’s life.

It all comes together to make the perfect world I look for in an experience. The perfect, imperfect world. It is this imperfect world that I fell into so quickly all those years ago. Only starting out as me stumbling across some screenshots a friend of mine posted way back, a silly conversation between Jill and Alma. I laughed, and grew curious, not only by the humor of the moment, but by everything that was presented to me. I still remember that first playthrough. Watching as characters I would grow attached to would disappear for days upon weeks, I would let out an audible gasp upon seeing them again, just to indulge in their casual musings yet again. The sharp twists and turns of this story would break out, and the entire mood would shift dramatically. Characters would grow weary, concerned, Jill herself would lose the cool demeanor her customers had gotten so accustomed to, and the music would become much more somber. All of it, from the brutal reality the protagonist had suddenly been thrust into, to the despondent music I had selected to play by my own hand, it all just felt… natural. Despite the physically unnatural circumstances of the city and its residents, every story I had read felt natural, but I never felt like I was a part of it. Because I wasn’t. It was all just a crucial chapter of Jill’s own story, not the beginning, nor the end. Life went on, for everyone involved, and I found myself holding its precious moments close to me, through multiple replays and reminiscences of the world I had fallen in love with.

And it is in this world, where I can find myself at my most vulnerable. VA-11 Hall-A brings out the emotion in me that few other games can so easily, just as the bar itself does so regularly with its clientele. From day one, I have, and forever will hold this experience closest to my heart, and I will surely do the same with whatever story is to be told in the future with its sequel.

This is my favorite game of all time. The perfect blend of every element I look for in a video game, in a show, in any form of art. This warm and comforting feeling, even in the face of such a brutal environment as this. This is what I would happily call a perfect game. The perfect game.

Cheers to eight years of cyberpunk bartender action.

If you truly dedicate yourself to the art of shitposting, you too can make something like Nightmare Kart.

Genuinely excellent and fun. I've also never experienced such in-depth CRT television simulation options in a video game before. Extremely cool. Father Gascoigne Gregory doing his short monologue about turning into a beast and then doing the breath thing, only for the camera to do a quick zoom-out to reveal that he's riding a golden motorcycle is hilarious. And yes, he does in fact do an Akira-slide on it.

I hunted.